of the whole neighbourhood. "Who is he, Tony? what's his name? do you know any thing about him ?" And the first syllabub remained unfinished in eager expectation of the reply.

"Know any thing about un? Doant I, Master Penguin ?" answered the clown, putting his long red finger to his nose, and winking one of his pig's eyes. "Ecod! he thought to run his rigs upon I, to come the old fox, but I pumped 'en finely; danged if I didn't!

"Did you so, Tony; and what might you discover?"

"Why, sure as ever I stand here, him be come a sweethearting a'ter Justice Welbeck's daughter."

"What! a lover of my friend Emily! Impossible, Tony! She knows no stranger, poor thing; and if she did, she would be too shy and diffident to encourage him. Besides, if this were his object, why should he stay here? He would be nearer to the Manor-house at the coast."

"Well, and him were a-going on to the coast, warn't him, only Ned Davis rattled the tyer off

o' one o' the Nelson's wheels. I think it were dine a-coming down Boldre Hill, and so he got out here; ay, and do mean to stop here some days."

"Some sick citizen, Tony, depend upon it, who liked the appearance of our village, and thought he might recover his health as well here, as by inhaling the sea-breezes. Has he the look of a valetudinarian ?"

"No! him don't look like a valet to ne'erLord love ye! him be a gemman, I tell

a-one.

ye."

"Perhaps he expects to live cheaper here than if he went on to the coast; and sooth to say, there is no small difference in the charge for lodgings. Ay, ay, I dare say he comes here from parsimony !"

"Not he; him do come here from Lunnun, there baint a doubt o' that, for I axed Ned. You may leave me alone, Master Penguin, for finding out the right meaning o' things."

"Ay, Tony, and the wrong one too; and therefore I should be glad to know why you have formed the sapient conclusion, that Miss Welbeck-but here comes talking Timo

thy, from whom, I dare say, we shall get the long of the matter, though we cannot expect the short of it.-Good morning, landlord, good morning."

Tony retreated from the room with another pull of his lank hair, and a simultaneous scrape of his left foot upon the floor, leaving to his master, as in duty bound, the farther developement of the stranger's character and intentions; but that the reader may understand the singular jargon of the voluble Mr. Timothy Wicks, landlord of the George, it is necessary to premise that he was a bustling, loquacious, empty-headed, little man, who had originally been a waiter, and had succeeded to his present post of landlord, by marrying his predecessor's widow. His spouse had now for many years been dead, leaving him sole proprietor of the George; the accounts of which flourishing concern he would never have been able to keep, for he was totally uneducated, but for the assistance of his daughter Sally. Finding himself in tolerably easy circumstances, our bourgeois resolved at length to be gentilhomme, so far, at least, as education was concerned;

and, in order that he might keep pace with the march of intellect, he went over once a week to attend the scientific lectures that were given at a neighbouring town. The Mechanics' Institutes, which, by inviting a large class of the community to substitute intellectual for sensual pursuits, must tend to raise it in the scale of being, not less certainly than to embalm the name of their founder as a benefactor to the human race, had not, at this period, been established. At the lectures he attended, Tim Wicks, faithfully committing to his memory all the hard words and technical terms, which he considered to be the pith and marrow of the whole matter, (although, in other respects, he came away just as ignorant as he went,) blurted them out upon all occasions with a most ludicrous and acute misconception of their meaning. This scientific malaprop sometimes changed his Babel dialect, according to the subject of the last lecture he had heard; the only part of his discourse that remained unvaried, being the fuss and pucker with which he called about him, and interlarded his disjointed gabble with orders

to Sally, cook, Sam ostler, and Tony, in the hope of persuading others, and perhaps himself, that the quiet, little-frequented inn of the George, was full of company, and involved in a consequent hubbub of business.

Amused by the absurdities of his character, attracted by Sally's syllabubs, and, perhaps, not altogether displeased to have a peep at her pretty face, Penguin seldom missed an opportunity in his rambles of turning into the parlour of the George-inn; and upon the present occasion, thus proceeded to commune with his host, who, having left the door of the room open, that he might both hear and observe what was passing within, bustled unceasingly about the chamber, now peeping out of the window into the road, now peering towards his own tap and stable-yard, and now busily whisking the dust from the furniture with a napkin which he held in his hand.

"Where's your pretty daughter, landlord ? if I saw her, I should scold her for not having made her syllabubs so good as usual.”

"Gone up to Doctor Dotterel's, Sir, to settle with the clerk. Pay as you go, that's my max